San Francisco high schoolers a no-show for first day of in-person learning

SAN FRANCISCO - Today is the day some San Francisco high school seniors returned to in-person classroom instruction, but many of those students preparing to graduate say it's too little too late.

After more than a year of remote learning, Raoul Wallenberg High School was chosen as one of eight high schools supposed to welcome back graduating seniors. But it's a small number of seniors who have returned, SFUSD saying just 565 students district wide completed a survey in time and expressed an interest in returning.

Many students like Hayden Barolette who attends Lincoln High School say at this point, with just three weeks to go in the school year, it doesn't make sense to upend their schedule to travel across town for a few days of in-person school per week.

"For me, it probably would have been a hindrance if I were to go back to in-person school, because that's just time that I'm not able to do my work really, because it's not actually instructional," said Barolette.

Medical experts say at this point there's no reason for the district to prevent all high school students from attending. 

"From a medical perspective, kids should be back, said Dr. Jeanne Noble from UCSF. "So, we've known now, for many months that schools could reopen safely and that's all the way up through high school."

The parents group decrease the distance says the district's plan to bring back just a handful of students one day before a state funding deadline is clearly a cash grab, the group released a statement earlier this week reading in part, "what our education leaders have worked out for students is literally the bare minimum needed to qualify for state ab-86 funds, which was intended to be for reopening and instruction."

Dr. Noble agrees. "It looks like what San Francisco Unified was doing, was trying to get a few seniors back you know, within 24 hours of funds expiring, so they could collect somewhere around $12 million for the school district for saying, essentially, that they'd opened one grade of high school," said Dr. Noble.

Even students like Barolette, who says he truly supports the district, say it seems like the students were an afterthought. "I think it's pretty clear that it's mostly for the state funds," said Barolette.

For its part the district referred KTVU to a statement from Tuesday reading in part, "Returning students in 12th grade to in-person learning qualifies under the state’s definition as in-person instruction."